Hurricane Claudette Hits Texas Coastline

July 15, 2003

PORT O'CONNOR, Texas — Hurricane Claudette made landfall on the Texas coastline Tuesday morning, lashing the state's central Gulf coast with heavy winds and rain as residents fled to higher ground.

Heavy rain was falling in Houston, about 100 miles northeast of Port O'Connor. At Galveston, on the northern edge of the storm, waves crashed over the 17-foot seawall that guards the city from the Gulf of Mexico.

At noon EDT, the center of the hurricane was over Matagorda Bay, about 10 miles east-northeast of Port O'Connor, the National Hurricane Center said in Miami.

Claudette's winds reached 75 miles an hour overnight, upgrading the system from a tropical storm to a Category One hurricane — the first of the Atlantic season.  Forecasters expected the storm to strengthen some more Tuesday afternoon.

Roofs were blown from beachfront homes, traffic lights toppled and palm trees bent in the wind. Electricity flickered.

At Port Lavaca, Leslie Pfiel waited his turn to fill his pickup with gasoline at one of few places in town with power.

"I don't think we're leaving unless things get worse," he said. "But if they get worse, we can't leave anyway."

No injuries had been reported.

The storm's 25-mile-wide eye, which seemed to be tightening, was expected to land Tuesday night between Port O'Connor and Palacios, on opposite sides of Matagorda Bay about midway between Galveston and Corpus Christi.

The hurricane warning area, which could expect to see sustained winds of up to 74 miles per hour, stretched from Baffin Bay south of Corpus Christi almost all the way to the Louisiana state line. The entire Texas coastline was under some sort of advisory.

Flooding from a storm surge 3 to 5 feet above normal tide levels also was likely in the warning area, along with 5 to 8 inches of rain.

A steady stream of pickup trucks drove out of Port O'Connor, towing boats and packed with belongings as residents and vacationers took the only road away from the Gulf of Mexico.

Charlie Keller, who had been fishing with friends from San Antonio, said they had hoped Claudette would veer elsewhere but "we just decided it was best to get back to town." He said they had boarded up the house where they were staying and packed up early Tuesday morning.

Port O'Connor, a village of vacation homes and shrimpers, was destroyed by a strong unnamed hurricane in 1919 and again by the Category 4 monster Hurricane Carla in 1961.

Emergency officials asked coastal residents in low-lying areas to evacuate.

"This is a minimal storm, but you need to move inland to high ground," said Rick Perry, Brazoria County's Emergency Management Coordinator.

Galveston County emergency management officials asked residents of the west end of the Bolivar Peninsula to consider leaving in anticipation of the storm, since anything above 4-foot tides would cut off evacuation routes.

"We are a little bit more under the gun," Galveston Mayor Roger Quiroga said.

Only about half the usual number of crabbers at Seadrift, on Guadalupe Bay near the center of the warning area, were at work Monday despite pleasant conditions, said Josephine London, 50.

"On Tuesday, I don't think they're going to go out," said London, whose wharfside barbecue joint is mere footsteps away from the water.

T.J. Blevins, 18, who works at Seasonal Seafood, which purchases the daily catch for shipment around the country, had practical reasons to worry about how the harbor will fare in this town of 1,300.

"I hope we have jobs to come back to," Blevins said.

Weather service forecaster Jim Campbell said swells that measured as high as 10 feet 200 miles offshore could lead to beach flooding and erosion and create dangerous rip currents for surfers and swimmers.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it was called in Sunday to search for 10 to 12 people who went out into the high seas at South Padre Island and got caught in strong currents.

All were accounted for, including an 8-year-old girl on a boogie board who was carried down the beach more than a mile, said Petty Officer Third Class Andrew Kendrick.

In the Corpus Christi area, city officials were concerned with the potential for coastal and inland flooding. An extra highway lane was being opened on a causeway from Padre Island to Corpus Christi to speed up voluntary evacuations.

Several state parks on the Texas Coast, including Goose Island in Rockport, Mustang Island between Corpus Christi and Port Aransas, Matagorda Island near Port O'Connor and Galveston Island, evacuated visitors on Monday and were likely to remain closed through at least Thursday.

Major oil companies had evacuated hundreds of workers from drilling and production platforms in the Gulf and shut down oil and gas production as the storm approached and gathered strength.

Claudette developed Tuesday in the Caribbean, brushing Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Mexico's Yucatan peninsula before entering the Gulf, where it has slowed down and gradually intensified from a tropical storm.

The last hurricane to strike Texas was in 1999, when Bret slammed into a largely unpopulated stretch between Corpus Christi and Brownsville.

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